Counselor Clips Wings Before Youth Fly High

Charles Howard believes in catching eagles before they soar.

As a man who has spent 20 years keeping young people out of drugs and crime, Howard knows the flight pattern of his “eagles.” Howard knows, he says, that if a difference is made in the street life of a kid, it must be made before the street life begins.

“When the eagle soars, there’s nothing we can do. When they’re flying high, it’s hard to pull them down. But most of the time, they fall to the ground by themselves,” Howard said. “And, after that, half the battle is not helping the kids, but battling the system--the people who buy drugs, the people in the power positions.”

Howard, a broad-chested former Marine, is a youth counselor in City Heights, a Southeast San Diego neighborhood. He is part of a small but potent Urban League unit that tries to steer kids in troubled neighborhoods into recreation, education and jobs. Other programs, such as the Triple Crown Youth Coalition and Barrio Station, have similar units with similar goals.

Since May, the Wisconsin native has spent his days using his low, gravelly voice to offer individual and group counseling for youths and their parents--and his afternoons walking the streets, trying to befriend a few kids and beat peer pressure and drugs to the punch.

“I practice more of a prevention type of approach than always waiting for a kid to get involved in these activities,” he said. “But, to do that, I have to be able to let them know I know where they’re coming from. I try to remember what was going on with me at that age. Kids always have wanted to show their friends that they’re not afraid to go along with any madness that comes up.”

The strategy of the hands-on approach is simple: Help kids when they’re young--but on their terms and their turf.

“I walk around, introduce myself, try to identify the hot spots (for drugs or crime). I try to talk to the kids who’ll listen to me,” said Howard, who works with at least 40 youths a month. “Sometimes I say, ‘Hey, how about coming with me to get a soda or see a movie?’ You have to let the kids know who you are, and that you can be trusted. Because, first and foremost, they don’t trust you.”

Establishing trust involves a different kind of communication, Howard and other counselors say.

“We basically try to identify ourselves to them, and let them know we’re not the police or anything like that,” said James Stancil, a counselor and program coordinator for Triple Crown. “Most of the time, when I try to talk to the kids, I try to use their slang. Then they’ll learn to trust me a lot quicker than if I come on with the authority of higher education or something like that.”

But there may be a thin line between being an authority and being a friend. As a 45-year-old ex-Marine, Howard faces some natural odds against gaining the trust of teen-agers. But his no-nonsense approach and experience, his associates say, are effective.

The seasoned counselor was cited in May by Crawford High School after helping calm racial rifts between whites, blacks, Latinos and Indochinese.

“Charles knows what to look for. He knows what to ask kids. He seems to be able to get down to their level,” said Eleanor Slaughter, an Urban League employment specialist who helps young people referred by Howard to find jobs, training or recreational opportunities.

“By going out into the neighborhoods, he shows them that here’s somebody giving them something and not wanting anything back. It’s like somebody walking up and giving a kid a hug and saying, ‘I love you,’ ” Slaughter said.

Although Howard usually works with kids between 12 and 21 years old, he focuses his efforts on the youngest--12 to 13--who are just beginning to wear the colors of a gang or follow a neighborhood drug leader, he says.

Howard came from a middle-class family and “decent” home, school and neighborhood, and didn’t succumb to drug use or criminal activities. “What saved me from a lot of it was that I didn’t want to disrespect my mother and father. I always listened to my inner self and it said, ‘Hey, you better get out of here,’ ” Howard said.

So he avoided it as a kid--but confronted it later. At the age of 25, after spending time in the Marine Corps., he worked as a parole officer for the California Youth Authority and later as a counselor with the state Department of Rehabilitation. In 1983, after earning a college degree in business administration at National University, he began to do volunteer counseling for Triple Crown and Barrio Station.

“Everything (with the state system) was so impersonal, and I knew that wasn’t how you get to people or turn things around--by being cold and callous and treating people like a number,” he said. “With this job, I have to be a professional, but I have to get down to the level of where the problems are. That means out in the neighborhoods.”

He joined the Urban League in January as a programs specialist, organizing recreation groups and job programs for youths.

Today, he finds himself talking to the children of the men he worked with when he began such counseling.

“I’ll watch one kid go through the process and end up in jail, and then watch three more ready to go through the process,” Howard said. That system “is where they get their education. It’s an education of survival. They learn how not to make the same mistakes again. And we in the community have to deal with that.”

The cycle can be frustrating, Howard and other counselors say. Often, their efforts make little difference among older and tougher kids, many of whom seem bound to become fixtures in the system.

“It only works with the kids who are reachable,” Slaughter said. “No matter how good you are, there are going to be some you don’t reach.”